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I have just been pointed to an excellent free resource for those of you who use spreadsheets or even those who don’t yet but would like to learn how to use them – a brand new website about Microsoft Excel!..

Now I’ve been using spreadsheets for many years, I love them, I even use excel as my calculator because my arthritic fingers often hit the wrong button on a calculator but I don’t realize so get an incorrect total, but with a spreadsheet, I can see the figures I enter and I just have a formula at the bottom that works out the total for me..

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In my work with bookkeeping clients, I’ve created a spreadsheet to work out the split for invoices with a mixture of tax and no tax items that have to be split into several cost centers – this was a real pain to do each time, but now it’s a breeze, all I need to do is enter invoice total, tax amount and % breakups and presto, the figures to enter are sitting there for me!

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Spreadsheeto is all about depth. That means each topic get thoroughly explained, in an easy-to-understand manner. All of their content is free and up to date. So even though you’re not an “Excel-nerd” (like they are), you can learn to do some pretty amazing things.

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Even if this is not for you, if you know someone who has to use a spreadsheet, maybe for a club or organisation they belong to, pass on this link to this excellent Excel training resource..

Although content has always been considered the be the “king” when it comes to writing compelling web material, with the rapidly increasing numbers of websites “out there”, never has it been so vitally important to make your content better that of your competition, so it pays to take the time to create high quality articles that visitors truly want to read.

Forget about taking shortcuts; no matter what niche or business you are in, the quality of your articles, posts & sales material will always be the key to a successful online venture.

To write content that really conveys the message you want to get across, take note of these 5 key factors:

Make It Easy To Read

Keep that in mind many people skim-read webpages. Your target readers are probably subscribed to several news feeds or blogs, so if you want to hold their interest, you need to make your content easy to read.

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Remember readers like white space, so use short paragraphs and bullet points or numbered lists with subheadings. Use web recommended fonts because research has shown them to be the most easily read by the majority of readers. A particular font might appeal to you, but that doesn’t mean it will have universal appeal or be easily read by others, especially those with poorer eyesight.

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Add graphics to your articles where that is appropriate as this makes the structure of your post more visually appealing and helps to keep your article focused on the point you want to get across.

Good Quality Material

While it is true that you can get articles written very cheaply when you don’t want (or don’t have time) to write them yourself and also true that some so-called “gurus” claim to still make money using poorly written articles, these guru’s may well have a very large list of people who will buy whatever they recommend, regardless of quality.

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Therefore, it isn’t a good idea for you to do what they do because you want to build a good reputation for yourself, build your business so that your readers and customers see you as a quality provider and will be more interested in your next offer. Remember, it is easier to sell something to an existing customer than it is to find a new one.

Be Natural

Don’t try to fill your article with keywords; make your sentences flow in a clear, informative and entertaining manner. Search engines have evolved to the point where you will be penalised for overuse of keywords, rather than rewarded in the rankings.

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The best advice is to stop worrying about keywords. If you are answering the questions your searchers are asking then the keywords will come into the content naturally.

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Of course you can add some in on purpose after the article is finished, but in a way that does not upset the flow. Keywords should be secondary to creating an article that’s interesting and informative.

A comfortable Length

There may be accepted “rules” as to how long your online articles should be, but every article and every subject is different, so use your common sense about it.

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Imagine that you are the person searching for your content; ask yourself if you could find the answer to what you want to know in just 100 – 150 words? If the answer to this is “yes”, then 100 -150 words is long enough! The key is to use as many words as are required to address the subject without getting off track or including unnecessary detail and very often, that will require a lot more than 100 words.

Current

Most online content becomes out of date and needs updating from time to time. Yes, some things don’t change much over time, like how to grow vegetables or recipes, so articles about these subjects are considered “evergreen” because they are still relevant long after being written. However, just because they are still relevant doesn’t mean you can re-hash them without penalty from the search engines.

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Remember that Google, Bing and the like are businesses too, trying to please their customers (searchers) so they will reward those who upload content that is fresh, up to date and original. It pays to take advantage of this fact by keeping on top of your industry and keeping your readers informed.

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It is a mistake to take shortcuts when it comes to high quality content. In the long term, it is well worth the time and effort it takes to write material that will convince your reader to take action and join your list or buy whatever you are offering.

Do you have a lot of WordPress sites, either for your clients or your own? If you do, you will certainly know how much time that can take on a daily basis to keep everything up to date and to add new content regularly.

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How would you like to use the time spent on mundane administrative tasks on more important business tasks? CMS Commander is an online service that aims to solve this problem and make managing multiple WordPress weblogs as fast and easy as controlling a single site.

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By placing all your wordpress sites into one powerful dashboard, CMS Commander makes it possible to update, backup and manage them all in bulk at the same time.

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Features of the CMS Commander plugin include:

1-click Updates of plugins, themes and WordPress on all sites

Automatic scheduled WordPress backups

Website cloning and restoring

Uptime monitoring and Analytics integration

Bulk posting and automatic content

While CMS Commander can be used for free a premium account will give you access to several special features and allows you to manage more websites.

Stop the madness

Put simply, it is process where you as the affiliate sell or promote someone else’s product or service and you receive a commission for your efforts. Affiliate Marketing is usually considered to be the lowest cost business model when starting an Online Business, and as such is the most popular method with many newcomers to Internet Marketing. The owners or licence holders of the product you promote can be called authors, publishers, merchants or other different terms, depending on whether it is a physical or an information product that you are promoting and how the commission payments are organised.

This business model can take many different forms but are commonly called Affiliate Programs. You join the affiliate program a merchant is using to sell a particular product you are interested in promoting. The most common types of programs are as follows:

Pay per click – each visitor you send to the merchant’s site will earn you a commission.

Pay per lead – each lead you send to the merchant’s site will earn you a commission.

Pay per sale – commission will be paid by publishers for each sale made at his website or on sites such as clickbank or paydotcom.

Each one of the above methods returns a certain payment for delivering the click, lead, or sale. By far the largest number of businesses utilizing this model work on a Pay per Sale system. There are hundreds of affiliate networks that you can join where the owners of the site have numerous publishers registered so you can choose products & promote them without have to join up to all the separate affiliate programs. Examples of such sites are Commission Junction, Clix Galore, Clickbank, PayDotCom and Click2sell.

Many Internet Marketers will guide the beginner into Affiliate Marketing because it is considered to be the cheapest and simplest business model to get started and develop, especially when all the marketing tools such as a web sales page, promotional emails, articles, press releases etc are provided by the publisher.

Your main costs will be in the promotion of the product or service. All costs associated with the product, sales page, delivery, after sales services, as well as merchant services set up and costs, will be paid by the merchant providing the product.

When starting your Internet Business through affiliate marketing there are five steps to follow:

Find your niche market which shows enough demand as well as a reasonable supply, as well as one that would support future business growth.

Find out what the market is searching for in terms of solutions to problems, or a product/service for which there is a shortage of supply or even a deficiency.

Research the available affiliate products and services for something that will fill the deficiency or fix the problem.

Promote the product by every means available to you.

Although this is not necessarily essential, owning your own website can increase your methods of promotion, but more importantly it allows you to pre-sell the product before redirecting them to the merchant’s sales page.

The final item regarding your own website needs serious consideration as it will be the best way towards developing and growing your business and to start creating an opt-in list of targeted potential customers.

Creating a trust between yourself and your customers, as well as your partners, is of prime importance to your business. This trust will serve you well as your customers will gradually consider you to be their expert in this niche and they will take your recommendations and buy.

To help build this relationship of trust, give value to potential customers by offering something useful to them for free. The more value you give them, the more they will be inclined to make purchases from you at a later date. Do not think for one minute that without it you will be able to succeed in affiliate marketing or any other type of business if you do not build a relationship of trust with a list of potential customers.